I'm Actually Really Religious: part two
In which things get more complicated and we learn about Adverse Religious Experiences
By the time I finished high school I’d taken on my parents’ wise advice to get another degree before considering heading to bible college. Surely new life experiences at university, away from all my friends and family, could only contribute more to the perspective I’d be able to bring to my future ministry role. In the meantime I’d represent God and share my faith wherever I was.
That year living in a university hostel in the big city was absolutely full of new life experiences, people, and robust, engaging discussions over the mystery meat in my student hostel cafeteria.
Finding a church and other Christians to connect with was a top priority and I wore my Christian identity boldly. However, the assumption that I had answers for life’s biggest questions now felt embarrassingly arrogant. So much of what I’d been taught about what it meant to follow Jesus just didn’t make a lot of sense in this context. Spending time working on assignments for a science degree when my entire purpose in life was up in the air didn’t make sense either. And the closeness I’d felt to God, the certainty I’d felt that I was known and loved and chosen, was all but gone.1
By the end of that first year I had stopped attending classes, shut myself away in my windowless hostel bedroom and fell into a depression.2
When the church I was attending put out a call for applications to intern with them3 the following year it sounded like an answer to my prayers. I knew I couldn’t return to many of the beliefs I’d once held, but my identity and purpose were inseparable from my faith. This would get me back on the path I’d seen laid out years earlier, with support and guidance as I trained for a future in church ministry.
As it turns out, one of the worst places for a lonely, depressed teenager who didn’t quite fit at the best of times is on staff at a conservative, wealthy, image-conscious church. A church that hadn’t been explicit about their stance that women couldn’t hold pastoral roles and had no intention of guiding any woman in that direction.4
The experiences of that internship year left me disillusioned with Christian institutions. More difficult, however, was that everyone I’d called friends were part of the congregation and didn’t want to hear anything that reflected badly on their church or it’s leaders. The message I internalised was that I must be the problem.
In writing an end of year reflection, I diplomatically listed the ways my expectations for the year didn’t line up with the reality. Reading back on it now,I am even more mortified that a vulnerable young person was treated with so little care.
But here’s a line from my conclusion:
“I am disappointed in myself for the way I have dealt with a lot of things. Had I had a better attitude and been walking more closely in the Spirit, my internship would have likely taken a different form.”
As far as I could see I had failed to live up to the purpose God had given me, and I carried that shame forward with me.
~
The Religious Trauma Institute has a name for experiences like mine over this internship year: Adverse Religious Experiences.
With any potentially traumatic event, the lasting impact on the well-being of a person depends a lot on the support they receive surrounding and following the event. And typically, when people have adverse experiences within churches there’s often not a lot of adequate support.
After attending a course on religious trauma, Christina from Reflecting on Church NZ wrote of the uninterrogated power and privilege held by some members of our faith communities:
“One of those sources of privilege is never having had an adverse religious experience. This leads to a lack of understanding of and criticism towards those who do not have this same privilege and may hold religious experiences or expressions more ambivalently.”
There’s so much good information around on religious trauma for those that seek it out, but these discussions really need to be had within churches and other religious communities. Having language to describe this type of experience is helpful for me, and I hope it will be helpful for opening up this conversation more widely.
There’s been some really interesting writing how different parental-child attachment styles might correspond to the ways people of faith tend to seek closeness with God. From Krispin Mayfield’s book Attached to God, my experience at this time sounds spot on for what he labels ‘anxious spirituality’.
There were undoubtably lots of other contributing factors to my depression, but this faith crisis stuff and having nobody to talk with about it was really significant. Wanting to support young people through similar transitions was a primary reason I applied for my current tertiary chaplain role.
For the record, it wasn’t with Arise, another New Zealand church that has had a huge number of people speaking up recently about their terrible internship experiences there.
Don’t get me started on churches not making it clear upfront who they discriminate against or consider second class citizens…